Is it time to go duo-lingual for charity offices in Wales?

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Is it time to go duo-lingual for charity offices in Wales?

The 2017 elections demonstrated how the four nations of the UK are being increasingly pulled in different directions by nationalist and unionist forces. Although the 2017 election saw a resurgence of pro-union political parties in Scotland (particularly the Conservative Party), the SNP still returned a solid majority of Scottish MPs.'The Northern Ireland Assembly Election in 2017 was the first in which unionist parties failed to win a majority of seats. Even in Wales where non-nationalist parties took nearly 90% of the popular vote and the parliamentary seats, nearly 70% of Welsh people voted for parties that sit on the opposition benches in Westminster.

In this environment, it is becoming increasingly important for UK Charities to be aware of the situation on the ground in each of the devolved nations, particularly what the people living in the devolved nations think about the charity sector in general as well as specific charitable brands. With the spring wave of our Celtic Charity Awareness Monitor approaching, we at nfpSynergy have decided to have a more in-depth look at one of the most important trends for the Welsh charity sector; the revival of the Welsh language and the issues for charities working in an increasingly multi-lingual country.

Welsh as a language underwent a renaissance in the second half of the twentieth century with the establishment of the Welsh Language Society in 1962. Since then the percentage of Welsh language speakers stabilised at 18.5% according to the 1991 census and increased for the first time in a century in 2001 to 20%. The implementation of The Welsh Language (Wales) Measure in 2011 and the subsequent consultations proposing new Welsh Language legislation (White Paper released on the 9th August 2017) set out a vision of reaching a million welsh language speakers by 2050.

As well as being a sizable minority of the Welsh population as a whole Welsh speakers are also concentrated spatially (figure 1).

The Welsh speaking areas of the country are also some of the most deprived areas of Wales (figure 1). Four local authority areas have a population where over 40% are Welsh Language speakers. In all of these local authority areas, the mean weekly earnings for a person in full time employment are below the Welsh average.. Also, areas with significant Welsh language speaking populations were the only constituencies where Welsh nationalist party Plaid Cymru returned MPs in the 2017 general election (figure 3). Combine this with the fact that almost a quarter of Welsh children are only taught in Welsh[1] and we realise that Welsh language speakers are becoming a larger constituency. Their needs must be addressed and adequate access to services needs to be provided.

Figure 1: Concentrations of Welsh language speakers by local authority area

Figure 2: Assisted Areas for Wales between 2014 and 2020, put forward by the Department for Business Innovation and Skills

Figure 3: 2017 General Election results by party in Wales (Red for Labour, Blue for Conservative, Green for Plaid Cymru)

So why does this matter to charities?

The latest wave of the Celtic Charity Awareness Monitor indicates that local and Welsh charities have a large amount of support within the Welsh public. Nearly half of the Welsh public (49%) would prefer to support either a local charity or a Welsh Charity. In addition to this, over a third of the public in Wales would prefer their charity donations to be spent in Wales. Even putting this aside, the fact that Wales is becoming a dual-lingual society will make service provision more accessible to the welsh speaking public, a group which is growing in size and will want to engage with engage with the public sphere in Wales and beyond.

Figure 3: Preference for charities with a distinct Welsh/local brand

 

There are positive developments on this front. Preliminary desk research shows that a majority of charities who subscribe to the Charity Awareness Monitor with an office in Wales have at least a proportion of their online communications in Welsh (57%). The extent of this translation can range from a description of their mission being translated into Welsh to charities like Mind who have started to translate all of their online support information. Save the Children has also led by example in bilingual communications, adopting the principle of treating English and Welsh on a basis of equality when they work in Wales.[2] Even more encouragingly, the bilingual campaign ‘Time to Change Wales/amser i newid Cymru’ has been launched to help end mental health stigma in Wales. This campaign has included bilingual advertising, traditional and social media drives as well as campaign videos shot in both languages.

However, 42% of CAM clients with Welsh offices have little or no Welsh language communications on their websites, which emphasizes the fact that there is still a long way to go.

Charities operating in Wales, especially charities that provide services to the public, need to keep reducing barriers for access to the services they provide and understand the needs of the populations they provide for. Starting to move towards bilingual messaging will help to achieve those goals.

If you wish to discover preferences of your supporters and understand your place among other charities operating in Wales, take a look at our research offer here or download the Briefing Pack to find out more. We are always there to talk you through the research options. Just drop a line to Kate at kate.cranstonturner@nfpsynergy.net.

Sam Burthem

 

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